McFarland,L_OH5_006

Abstract: This is an oral history of Lila Beverly McFarland. It was conducted May 22, 2007 and concerns her recollections of the history of the Marriott-Slaterville area.
LM: My name is Lila Beverly McFarland. My first recollection of growing up in this community is when I was just a little girl my mom had a baby. She didn’t want to stay alone so she kept me home from school to stay with her. I didn’t start school until I was seven. My family members were all born right here same as me. My ancestors, the pioneers, came from Scotland and Norway. My memories about my parents and my family take place in the little old house we lived in. It was just a tiny, tiny one. I remember the kitchen floor and how my mother used to wax it until it just shined. We had baby rabbits, and to entertain us kids, she would bring these baby rabbits in and they would slide all over, that was our entertainment. We had fun.
I went to school in the old Slaterville schoolhouse four blocks west of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). They took two bunches of my dad’s property, they built the canal and they built the IRS. We didn’t have much left when they got through taking the property, it was just right over on 2nd street just below the IRS.
Some of the stories of my grandparents and parents—my mother used to tell me that she was born in North Ogden. Her dad died when she was really young so she had to milk the cows from the time that she was a little girl. When she moved down here they got married and she hated cows. She didn’t want anything to do with cows. That was off her list so the boys had to go milk the cows.
I attended church in the old Slaterville church house. That was a fun place. We used to have dances at night. I can remember my dad’s friend, his name was Norton Bowns, he used to be the one that got the dances planned and got the orchestra and they would give prizes to people who danced the best I guess. They let me come and hand out the prizes. I would get real sleepy so they would put me on one of those hardwood benches and I would sleep until we went home. The night that the dance was supposed to be I remember my mom used to dress me in a dress and she put me in on—we had a Davenport they called it—she put me in on it and said, “Go to sleep so you won’t be tired tonight.” I remember that real plainly.
Then I remember my mom’s mother died and she left her three hundred dollars. She went to town, we only had old furniture, so she bought a couch and she bought a carpet rug, two little end tables and she thought she was in heaven. My sister made her a pair of curtains and we just thought that was the greatest thing there was. We really enjoyed that because we didn’t have any money.
The old tabernacle we used to go to all the time for the conferences and that was a neat building. I can remember this one stake president we had. All the time he was announcing he would cry, tears would just run, which is what I can remember there. We went every time as a family.
The activities we had—my dad was a farmer and had a big farm until the depot took it. He raised beets, so we topped beets, we pulled onions, and potatoes, we grew all our own stuff. We had all of our own meat and eggs, we had a big farm and we all worked in it. Then he planted a little garden too with some radishes in it and peas. I can remember him coming with these big hay racks they called them and gather up our peas and take them to the pea refinery. Me and the other kids used to sit out by the road and when these big wagons went by—of course, horses were pulling them so they weren’t going very fast—we would pull off a bunch and sit in the ditch and eat them. That was a fun thing. Mom just stayed home and took care of her family. She loved her family so much, she really did. She couldn’t see any wrong and I’d say to her, “Mama, we are just normal.” She’d say, “No, I have got the best kids there is.” She was a very religious person. My dad wasn’t quite as religious. He was a good guy. I had a sister, Helen, a brother, Bud, he is in the Emerest nursing place and he is not doing real good, and then I have a brother, Bob, that just lives right over where we were raised. That is all of my family. We didn’t have that many kids.
One other thing I remember about my family is at Christmas time. We didn’t have any money, we had a tree though. We had a tree and had all these old decorations that I wish I had now. We would put those on the tree and we had a sock we hung up that wasn’t fancy, it was just one of our socks. In it we got an orange and some peanuts and a little tiny bit of hard tack candy. I remember that Christmas I got a doll. My mom had a Treadle sewing machine so I put the doll on the treadle bar, which was her bed. I remember doing that. We would get one present each, maybe a couple of little things but not much. The Treadle sewing machine—you did it yourself, you did it with your feet. Peddle, peddle, peddle, because there was no electricity. It sewed just as good as the ones you plug in but you just did it with your feet. I wish I had that too.
As we got a little bit older we used to have road shows. We just had a ball. They were the funnest things. We would travel to different wards and then they would choose the one that was the best. That was really a fun thing when I got bigger and the boys started kind of hanging around. I remember we went down to these people’s place that was named Tucker. Sunday afternoons we would get a ball team and we would play on Sunday afternoon, play ball down in their pasture.
I remember one thing that I didn’t tell before is whenever my dad got through with the horses he lead them down through the field and we had a creek going across the back. He would leave them there all night so they could drink. This one time I asked him if I could ride so he put me on one. We were riding along and we went under a tree that was—I don’t remember the name of what it was, but it had little round things on them and I thought they’d be good to eat. So I reached up to pick one and I held on too long because it wouldn’t come off and my dad went on and the horse went right out from under me and I went plop. He was not happy at all. He was really upset with me that I would do something like that. I wasn’t going to let go of that and I was going to get it. That was a fun time.
Fashions that I can remember—I can remember we used to wear the really full skirts and we had a whole bunch of petticoats made out of net. They held them so that they just stood way out. In high school some of the kids had a lot of money so they had Jansen’s and all those fancy kinds of sweaters and stuff. There was a lot that didn’t. You kind of had three outfits and you wore them and then you started over again. You didn’t have one for everyday like the kids do nowadays. We had fun in high school. We really had a lot of fun.
When I first met my husband I think we were about fourteen. We were peddling along, me and my girlfriend, on this bike and the tire went flat. She was pumping me and I was sitting up in the handle bars and these kids came along in their little old car. They asked us if we wanted a ride and they had a rumble seat. We said, “Yes, if we could just get in the rumble seat.” You didn’t worry then. They took us home and then from then on we kind of kept going together. The rumble seat was in the very back and it had to open up from the outside. You just opened it up and there was a seat. You climbed up in there and rode in back. It was fun. It was a neat ride, I wouldn’t mind having one of those now. That was a fun time.
I was going to mention something else—oh, about any difficulties or trauma or fires—I remember a flood once over where the diversion dam is. It is over on seventeenth. The river flooded over. They didn’t have the dam then and the river just flooded over. I can remember somebody came to church and told us that there was a flood and there were some kids in a little boat and it had tipped over. I can remember we all got in our cars and went over and I can remember Glenn, my husband, and a guy named Ken DeFriez, they were still in their suits but they waded out to try and catch these kids. They caught them all except one and he kept going so they ran down to the bridge on 1900 and they caught him ‘cause they went to the bridge. So they got them all out. It was about four or five of them. That was quite an experience.
I am not sure how old I was—me and my brother were out playing jump rope and I looked up at our roof and I said, “Look! The roof is steaming.” He said, “Well it can’t be steaming, it hasn’t been raining.” Our house was on fire. So we ran into mama and she came running out and you didn’t have fire hydrants or anything so our neighbor, Mr. Meyerhoffer, they hurried and pumped their trough that they feed cows out of the water, pumped it full so they could get water from there and they finally got it out but the whole roof was burned off. So we went to live with my grandparents who lived next door and then they rebuilt our house. They think my mom put some newspaper in the stove and that a piece of it went up through and landed on the roof. The shingles probably weren’t good so that is what happened. That was kind of a bad time. We didn’t have phones then except my grandma had one. I can’t remember who—somebody ran down there and they called the fire department. They finally got it out but it was kind of a mess.
Oh, I had another disaster too. In the house we are living in now, we had our basement all finished. The Nature Center, is on this street—on 1200 West, and they filled the canal. We had our basement all finished and about three days after they filled it they figure it found a direct route up to our basement and one day I was walking downstairs with my arms full of folded clothes and I stepped off and there was a bunch of water. I just sat down and started crying. I looked over the middle of that basement floor, which was cement, and it had just raised that middle up—that much pressure. So we did everything we could think of to fix it. We dug around the outside, we cut a hole out in back and we were going to put a sump pump in, nothing would fix it. It was just directly there. So we decided we had to build on the back and fill the basement with dirt. So that is what we did. My husband, Glen left a little hole like that and he put a sump pump down in it. And we watered our whole yard with it for the rest of the time. But we didn’t have a basement. So that took care of that.
The leadership in our community was really good. I can remember about four or five bishops. I remember Harold Slater, I remember E. Arnold Slater, I remember a Gardner, Victor Wheeler, Ron Smoot, there were quite a few of them that I remembered and they were all real good leaders. I enjoyed all of them. There were a lot of other leaders that I didn’t know except I remember the watering ditch because everybody fought over it. They were always coming to my dad saying, “Hey, this one took my water. That one took my water.” It was a nightmare. We did have fun when we did water because we got to swim in the ditch. That was a fun thing. The water that we watered with came from the river as far as I know. Everybody had turns. Mr. Stanger, Leland, he was the one that wrote down when your turn was and how long—it depended on how many shares you had how long you got to water. When it would come down the ditch and it was your turn you went and pulled out a dam and that was just a board in the ditch. It came to your place. Then when you were through with it you had to put that board back in and the next one had to go do it when it was his turn. There was always a lot of fighting about the water. That wasn’t a very good thing. When the water did come down the ditch, the ditches went through your yard or your field and that is when the kids got to play in the water. It was probably dirtier than heck but we thought it was neat.
Our reunions were wonderful. My dad was over the ward reunions. I can remember we had so much food. They just had a lot of good food. Everybody brought stuff. I can remember especially chicken pot pies. They made great big ones and filled them full of chicken and vegetables and they were so good. We had them down in the basement of our little old church. They set these long tables and everybody would come. They had to do it in three shifts because there were so many people. The food was delicious. The kids couldn’t come until the next day because we had to go to school, so the next day they took us over there. Well, before that they had dinner and then the ones that lived far away and couldn’t go home they had them a lunch and then a big dance and a program. Then the next day the kids got to go over. Of course, it was leftovers but it was delicious. Then we had a dance. I can remember we had a piano player which was Clarence Allred and a violin player and that was Roy Perry. The only song I remember was Turkey in the Straw. They played that over and over and over. We just had a ball. It was so much fun. You had a partner and they would trade dances. A lot of trading dances. They were just nice songs. We had this orchestra and I can’t remember—it seems like Old Ridges was his name. It was good but they weren’t fast dances or anything. They were just nice dances. I don’t know what you would call what we did; we just jumped all over and had fun. The other one I remember—I don’t know what the name was but it was “Sally lost her petticoat going to the ball.” We danced to that one too. It was fun growing up, it was really a lot of fun. I am real happy.
We didn’t have to wait until we were sixteen. I guess we were supposed to, but me and Glen started going together at about fourteen and a half years old. That was it. We just liked each other and we kept going together. He went to Ogden High and I went to Weber. We had a little bit of conflict about that. I can remember one time he took me to a basketball game up there and Weber High made a basket. I just jumped up and was yelling. I turned around and looked and nobody else was standing up. They were all from Ogden High. He was pulling on me trying to get me to sit down. I didn’t even think about that. I just thought that was really neat. I can remember every time we would go past Ogden High we had this joke about it. He would say, “Put your hand on your heart. We are going past Ogden High.” So we made a joke out of that. Then he had to go in the army. He turned eighteen and about three days later they took him in the army. He went to Fort Ord, California. He was there for just a little while and he had a lot of dark hair. He was going to go overseas so his mom said—we were nineteen then or eighteen—his mom said, “I’ll take you on the bus and we’ll go see him before he goes overseas.” Me and her got on the bus and went down and saw him. They shaved all his hair off. He didn’t look the same at all. Then he went overseas and he fought in Japan. Then he was gone for about two and a half years. Then he came home and we got married. He still had to finish a little more time so he got sent to Colorado to finish. We were up there a year. I was expecting a baby so when we came home it was time for me to have the baby. Well we thought we had about two weeks left but it was a long ride home and a bumpy ride in that little old Ford. We got home and then the next morning I had a little boy.
We went to the old McKay Dee Hospital which was up on Harrison and about 24th. I was there for—it seems like it was a whole day. He was born in the night. They decided they had given me too much stuff and it got to him, so they had to put him in an incubator because they had given me too much stuff. I was born at home. I didn’t want that. We lived up on 377 12th street in a little old house. We had no bathroom, no stove except an oil burning stove. We were happy. We got along really well. We stayed there until we had all of our children except the last one. We had moved down to our other house when we had the last one. It was an old house but we had it fixed really nice, as nice as we could. There were no closets in it so we put these little iron pipes behind our doors and that is where we hung the clothes. Finally, I can remember—I don’t even know who did it but we built a bathroom out of part of the kitchen or something. So we had a bathroom and we had always had running water. We still have a coal stove in the kitchen and an oil stove in the front room. We never did change that. We liked that little stove so we kept it until we moved down. It was so nice to have all the conveniences when we moved into the other house.
I remember something happened to our furnace. The furnace we had in the new house we moved into had a stoker. It was where you had to get real fine slat coal they called it, and you would fill that thing full every morning and then it would keep you warm all day. Something happened to it so I remember this neighbor had some kind of a nice furnace so he tore that old one out for us and put this new one in. I can remember I went down to my mom’s while they did it. When I came home that warm heater was just wonderful. Every room—before it would just heat one room. I can still remember that feeling when I walked in there. It was just toasty warm. That was a very good thing.
My mom and dad didn’t have any conveniences either. My brothers built them a bathroom and then they had a long room, they called it a pantry, where they stored some of their food. So they tore the wall out of it and made them a bigger kitchen. My mom had it nice at the last.
We had three good meals a day when I was a wee girl. I can’t remember when we ate breakfast but I know we ate it. We had a nice big dinner when my dad would come in from the fields with my brothers. We would all sit down and have a good cooked dinner. Then after they got through with all the chores and everything, we had supper we called it. When I call it that now the kids said, “That isn’t what you call it grandma. It is lunch and—” I don’t know, something. I said, “Well that is what we called it. We had three a day and we were always there.” We had our own food. We had our own meat so we always had bacon and eggs. We didn’t have little stuff like they have now. We had good meals. I know now the kids are lucky if they can grab a toaster strudel or something and drink a juice. They are never there at the same time. We were there at the same time so we always got to sit down together. Now you hardly ever sit down together. I really enjoyed that.
We always had a really good cooked meal. We had meat, potatoes and gravy, and vegetables for what we called dinner. At supper it was usually something like soup—she made a lot of tomato soup. I remember—and most people just die when I say this but she made the best oyster soup. I loved that oyster soup. I’d fill it full of soda crackers. That was really good too. Then she had this great big pan and she baked six loaves of bread in it. She did that once a week and when we would come home from school she would let us have one loaf just to break all up and put butter on it. To this day I can’t remember where we got the butter or what it was like. It wasn’t margarine or anything. That was so good. And honey, we had honey to eat and that was really good. I thought when I get married I’m going to be sure to bake bread and I did. I baked it while the kids were in school, especially on Wednesdays, that was my primary day and I was in the primary. So that morning I would either make stew or something that was already prepared—chili or something and bake bread so it would be ready when we got home. We ate together most all of the time. When the kids got a little older and got different jobs we couldn’t as much.
I don’t remember us ever having the baked stuff they have now like twinkies and all that stuff. I don’t think they ever had that. Once in awhile my mom would make a white cake and no frosting. She would put jelly between the layers and some jelly on top of it. Then we had raspberries. We had two rows of them. Once a week we had to go pick those raspberries and we were scratched because you had to go down through a row. When we picked the raspberries, then she would let us have some sugar and some real cream on it because we had cream from the cows. That was really a treat those raspberries. If she had any left she mashed them with a potato masher really fine and put so much sugar in—I don’t know how much—and then she would put them in these tin plate things and spread this mixture out on it and then sit it out in the sun with a piece of screen over it so nothing could get in it and it made jelly. She really didn’t have pectin or anything so that is where we got our jelly.
When I got married, we liked peaches and she would always say, “Okay, we are going to get two bushels of peaches. You come on over and help me peel them and put them in bottles.” So we would do two bushels of peaches, me and her. My dad tried to help us but he drove us crazy so we tried to find jobs for him outside.
Another thing I remember about my mom—sometimes if I would get discouraged and was tired of taking care of kids and everything she would say, “Well bring your ironing and come on over.” So I would pick up my ironing and she would iron one and I would iron one we’d visit. Then she would say, “I think maybe you need a cup of tea.” And she would make me a cup of tea. That really did something for me. Then I didn’t care if I drank tea, but I just think that was so good. I would just sit there and then I would go back home and I was okay. We had a real closeness. We could tell each other anything. I really miss her.
My husband started his church callings when he was twenty-seven being the Elder’s Quorum President. Then he got put in the bishopric at only twenty-seven. Then he got—what was his next one? He got put on the High Council. Then he got put in as Bishop again. Then Stake President and when he died he was the Patriarch. He was gone a lot so I was kind of alone with the kids all the time. But we got along and everything worked out okay. Nowadays I think if the husband was gone that much they would get a divorce, wouldn’t they? I thought, when we got married you got married, and that was it. You took it for better or worse.

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Abstract: This is an oral history of Lila Beverly McFarland. It was conducted May 22, 2007 and concerns her recollections of the history of the Marriott-Slaterville area.
LM: My name is Lila Beverly McFarland. My first recollection of growing up in this community is when I was just a little girl my mom had a baby. She didn’t want to stay alone so she kept me home from school to stay with her. I didn’t start school until I was seven. My family members were all born right here same as me. My ancestors, the pioneers, came from Scotland and Norway. My memories about my parents and my family take place in the little old house we lived in. It was just a tiny, tiny one. I remember the kitchen floor and how my mother used to wax it until it just shined. We had baby rabbits, and to entertain us kids, she would bring these baby rabbits in and they would slide all over, that was our entertainment. We had fun.
I went to school in the old Slaterville schoolhouse four blocks west of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). They took two bunches of my dad’s property, they built the canal and they built the IRS. We didn’t have much left when they got through taking the property, it was just right over on 2nd street just below the IRS.
Some of the stories of my grandparents and parents—my mother used to tell me that she was born in North Ogden. Her dad died when she was really young so she had to milk the cows from the time that she was a little girl. When she moved down here they got married and she hated cows. She didn’t want anything to do with cows. That was off her list so the boys had to go milk the cows.
I attended church in the old Slaterville church house. That was a fun place. We used to have dances at night. I can remember my dad’s friend, his name was Norton Bowns, he used to be the one that got the dances planned and got the orchestra and they would give prizes to people who danced the best I guess. They let me come and hand out the prizes. I would get real sleepy so they would put me on one of those hardwood benches and I would sleep until we went home. The night that the dance was supposed to be I remember my mom used to dress me in a dress and she put me in on—we had a Davenport they called it—she put me in on it and said, “Go to sleep so you won’t be tired tonight.” I remember that real plainly.
Then I remember my mom’s mother died and she left her three hundred dollars. She went to town, we only had old furniture, so she bought a couch and she bought a carpet rug, two little end tables and she thought she was in heaven. My sister made her a pair of curtains and we just thought that was the greatest thing there was. We really enjoyed that because we didn’t have any money.
The old tabernacle we used to go to all the time for the conferences and that was a neat building. I can remember this one stake president we had. All the time he was announcing he would cry, tears would just run, which is what I can remember there. We went every time as a family.
The activities we had—my dad was a farmer and had a big farm until the depot took it. He raised beets, so we topped beets, we pulled onions, and potatoes, we grew all our own stuff. We had all of our own meat and eggs, we had a big farm and we all worked in it. Then he planted a little garden too with some radishes in it and peas. I can remember him coming with these big hay racks they called them and gather up our peas and take them to the pea refinery. Me and the other kids used to sit out by the road and when these big wagons went by—of course, horses were pulling them so they weren’t going very fast—we would pull off a bunch and sit in the ditch and eat them. That was a fun thing. Mom just stayed home and took care of her family. She loved her family so much, she really did. She couldn’t see any wrong and I’d say to her, “Mama, we are just normal.” She’d say, “No, I have got the best kids there is.” She was a very religious person. My dad wasn’t quite as religious. He was a good guy. I had a sister, Helen, a brother, Bud, he is in the Emerest nursing place and he is not doing real good, and then I have a brother, Bob, that just lives right over where we were raised. That is all of my family. We didn’t have that many kids.
One other thing I remember about my family is at Christmas time. We didn’t have any money, we had a tree though. We had a tree and had all these old decorations that I wish I had now. We would put those on the tree and we had a sock we hung up that wasn’t fancy, it was just one of our socks. In it we got an orange and some peanuts and a little tiny bit of hard tack candy. I remember that Christmas I got a doll. My mom had a Treadle sewing machine so I put the doll on the treadle bar, which was her bed. I remember doing that. We would get one present each, maybe a couple of little things but not much. The Treadle sewing machine—you did it yourself, you did it with your feet. Peddle, peddle, peddle, because there was no electricity. It sewed just as good as the ones you plug in but you just did it with your feet. I wish I had that too.
As we got a little bit older we used to have road shows. We just had a ball. They were the funnest things. We would travel to different wards and then they would choose the one that was the best. That was really a fun thing when I got bigger and the boys started kind of hanging around. I remember we went down to these people’s place that was named Tucker. Sunday afternoons we would get a ball team and we would play on Sunday afternoon, play ball down in their pasture.
I remember one thing that I didn’t tell before is whenever my dad got through with the horses he lead them down through the field and we had a creek going across the back. He would leave them there all night so they could drink. This one time I asked him if I could ride so he put me on one. We were riding along and we went under a tree that was—I don’t remember the name of what it was, but it had little round things on them and I thought they’d be good to eat. So I reached up to pick one and I held on too long because it wouldn’t come off and my dad went on and the horse went right out from under me and I went plop. He was not happy at all. He was really upset with me that I would do something like that. I wasn’t going to let go of that and I was going to get it. That was a fun time.
Fashions that I can remember—I can remember we used to wear the really full skirts and we had a whole bunch of petticoats made out of net. They held them so that they just stood way out. In high school some of the kids had a lot of money so they had Jansen’s and all those fancy kinds of sweaters and stuff. There was a lot that didn’t. You kind of had three outfits and you wore them and then you started over again. You didn’t have one for everyday like the kids do nowadays. We had fun in high school. We really had a lot of fun.
When I first met my husband I think we were about fourteen. We were peddling along, me and my girlfriend, on this bike and the tire went flat. She was pumping me and I was sitting up in the handle bars and these kids came along in their little old car. They asked us if we wanted a ride and they had a rumble seat. We said, “Yes, if we could just get in the rumble seat.” You didn’t worry then. They took us home and then from then on we kind of kept going together. The rumble seat was in the very back and it had to open up from the outside. You just opened it up and there was a seat. You climbed up in there and rode in back. It was fun. It was a neat ride, I wouldn’t mind having one of those now. That was a fun time.
I was going to mention something else—oh, about any difficulties or trauma or fires—I remember a flood once over where the diversion dam is. It is over on seventeenth. The river flooded over. They didn’t have the dam then and the river just flooded over. I can remember somebody came to church and told us that there was a flood and there were some kids in a little boat and it had tipped over. I can remember we all got in our cars and went over and I can remember Glenn, my husband, and a guy named Ken DeFriez, they were still in their suits but they waded out to try and catch these kids. They caught them all except one and he kept going so they ran down to the bridge on 1900 and they caught him ‘cause they went to the bridge. So they got them all out. It was about four or five of them. That was quite an experience.
I am not sure how old I was—me and my brother were out playing jump rope and I looked up at our roof and I said, “Look! The roof is steaming.” He said, “Well it can’t be steaming, it hasn’t been raining.” Our house was on fire. So we ran into mama and she came running out and you didn’t have fire hydrants or anything so our neighbor, Mr. Meyerhoffer, they hurried and pumped their trough that they feed cows out of the water, pumped it full so they could get water from there and they finally got it out but the whole roof was burned off. So we went to live with my grandparents who lived next door and then they rebuilt our house. They think my mom put some newspaper in the stove and that a piece of it went up through and landed on the roof. The shingles probably weren’t good so that is what happened. That was kind of a bad time. We didn’t have phones then except my grandma had one. I can’t remember who—somebody ran down there and they called the fire department. They finally got it out but it was kind of a mess.
Oh, I had another disaster too. In the house we are living in now, we had our basement all finished. The Nature Center, is on this street—on 1200 West, and they filled the canal. We had our basement all finished and about three days after they filled it they figure it found a direct route up to our basement and one day I was walking downstairs with my arms full of folded clothes and I stepped off and there was a bunch of water. I just sat down and started crying. I looked over the middle of that basement floor, which was cement, and it had just raised that middle up—that much pressure. So we did everything we could think of to fix it. We dug around the outside, we cut a hole out in back and we were going to put a sump pump in, nothing would fix it. It was just directly there. So we decided we had to build on the back and fill the basement with dirt. So that is what we did. My husband, Glen left a little hole like that and he put a sump pump down in it. And we watered our whole yard with it for the rest of the time. But we didn’t have a basement. So that took care of that.
The leadership in our community was really good. I can remember about four or five bishops. I remember Harold Slater, I remember E. Arnold Slater, I remember a Gardner, Victor Wheeler, Ron Smoot, there were quite a few of them that I remembered and they were all real good leaders. I enjoyed all of them. There were a lot of other leaders that I didn’t know except I remember the watering ditch because everybody fought over it. They were always coming to my dad saying, “Hey, this one took my water. That one took my water.” It was a nightmare. We did have fun when we did water because we got to swim in the ditch. That was a fun thing. The water that we watered with came from the river as far as I know. Everybody had turns. Mr. Stanger, Leland, he was the one that wrote down when your turn was and how long—it depended on how many shares you had how long you got to water. When it would come down the ditch and it was your turn you went and pulled out a dam and that was just a board in the ditch. It came to your place. Then when you were through with it you had to put that board back in and the next one had to go do it when it was his turn. There was always a lot of fighting about the water. That wasn’t a very good thing. When the water did come down the ditch, the ditches went through your yard or your field and that is when the kids got to play in the water. It was probably dirtier than heck but we thought it was neat.
Our reunions were wonderful. My dad was over the ward reunions. I can remember we had so much food. They just had a lot of good food. Everybody brought stuff. I can remember especially chicken pot pies. They made great big ones and filled them full of chicken and vegetables and they were so good. We had them down in the basement of our little old church. They set these long tables and everybody would come. They had to do it in three shifts because there were so many people. The food was delicious. The kids couldn’t come until the next day because we had to go to school, so the next day they took us over there. Well, before that they had dinner and then the ones that lived far away and couldn’t go home they had them a lunch and then a big dance and a program. Then the next day the kids got to go over. Of course, it was leftovers but it was delicious. Then we had a dance. I can remember we had a piano player which was Clarence Allred and a violin player and that was Roy Perry. The only song I remember was Turkey in the Straw. They played that over and over and over. We just had a ball. It was so much fun. You had a partner and they would trade dances. A lot of trading dances. They were just nice songs. We had this orchestra and I can’t remember—it seems like Old Ridges was his name. It was good but they weren’t fast dances or anything. They were just nice dances. I don’t know what you would call what we did; we just jumped all over and had fun. The other one I remember—I don’t know what the name was but it was “Sally lost her petticoat going to the ball.” We danced to that one too. It was fun growing up, it was really a lot of fun. I am real happy.
We didn’t have to wait until we were sixteen. I guess we were supposed to, but me and Glen started going together at about fourteen and a half years old. That was it. We just liked each other and we kept going together. He went to Ogden High and I went to Weber. We had a little bit of conflict about that. I can remember one time he took me to a basketball game up there and Weber High made a basket. I just jumped up and was yelling. I turned around and looked and nobody else was standing up. They were all from Ogden High. He was pulling on me trying to get me to sit down. I didn’t even think about that. I just thought that was really neat. I can remember every time we would go past Ogden High we had this joke about it. He would say, “Put your hand on your heart. We are going past Ogden High.” So we made a joke out of that. Then he had to go in the army. He turned eighteen and about three days later they took him in the army. He went to Fort Ord, California. He was there for just a little while and he had a lot of dark hair. He was going to go overseas so his mom said—we were nineteen then or eighteen—his mom said, “I’ll take you on the bus and we’ll go see him before he goes overseas.” Me and her got on the bus and went down and saw him. They shaved all his hair off. He didn’t look the same at all. Then he went overseas and he fought in Japan. Then he was gone for about two and a half years. Then he came home and we got married. He still had to finish a little more time so he got sent to Colorado to finish. We were up there a year. I was expecting a baby so when we came home it was time for me to have the baby. Well we thought we had about two weeks left but it was a long ride home and a bumpy ride in that little old Ford. We got home and then the next morning I had a little boy.
We went to the old McKay Dee Hospital which was up on Harrison and about 24th. I was there for—it seems like it was a whole day. He was born in the night. They decided they had given me too much stuff and it got to him, so they had to put him in an incubator because they had given me too much stuff. I was born at home. I didn’t want that. We lived up on 377 12th street in a little old house. We had no bathroom, no stove except an oil burning stove. We were happy. We got along really well. We stayed there until we had all of our children except the last one. We had moved down to our other house when we had the last one. It was an old house but we had it fixed really nice, as nice as we could. There were no closets in it so we put these little iron pipes behind our doors and that is where we hung the clothes. Finally, I can remember—I don’t even know who did it but we built a bathroom out of part of the kitchen or something. So we had a bathroom and we had always had running water. We still have a coal stove in the kitchen and an oil stove in the front room. We never did change that. We liked that little stove so we kept it until we moved down. It was so nice to have all the conveniences when we moved into the other house.
I remember something happened to our furnace. The furnace we had in the new house we moved into had a stoker. It was where you had to get real fine slat coal they called it, and you would fill that thing full every morning and then it would keep you warm all day. Something happened to it so I remember this neighbor had some kind of a nice furnace so he tore that old one out for us and put this new one in. I can remember I went down to my mom’s while they did it. When I came home that warm heater was just wonderful. Every room—before it would just heat one room. I can still remember that feeling when I walked in there. It was just toasty warm. That was a very good thing.
My mom and dad didn’t have any conveniences either. My brothers built them a bathroom and then they had a long room, they called it a pantry, where they stored some of their food. So they tore the wall out of it and made them a bigger kitchen. My mom had it nice at the last.
We had three good meals a day when I was a wee girl. I can’t remember when we ate breakfast but I know we ate it. We had a nice big dinner when my dad would come in from the fields with my brothers. We would all sit down and have a good cooked dinner. Then after they got through with all the chores and everything, we had supper we called it. When I call it that now the kids said, “That isn’t what you call it grandma. It is lunch and—” I don’t know, something. I said, “Well that is what we called it. We had three a day and we were always there.” We had our own food. We had our own meat so we always had bacon and eggs. We didn’t have little stuff like they have now. We had good meals. I know now the kids are lucky if they can grab a toaster strudel or something and drink a juice. They are never there at the same time. We were there at the same time so we always got to sit down together. Now you hardly ever sit down together. I really enjoyed that.
We always had a really good cooked meal. We had meat, potatoes and gravy, and vegetables for what we called dinner. At supper it was usually something like soup—she made a lot of tomato soup. I remember—and most people just die when I say this but she made the best oyster soup. I loved that oyster soup. I’d fill it full of soda crackers. That was really good too. Then she had this great big pan and she baked six loaves of bread in it. She did that once a week and when we would come home from school she would let us have one loaf just to break all up and put butter on it. To this day I can’t remember where we got the butter or what it was like. It wasn’t margarine or anything. That was so good. And honey, we had honey to eat and that was really good. I thought when I get married I’m going to be sure to bake bread and I did. I baked it while the kids were in school, especially on Wednesdays, that was my primary day and I was in the primary. So that morning I would either make stew or something that was already prepared—chili or something and bake bread so it would be ready when we got home. We ate together most all of the time. When the kids got a little older and got different jobs we couldn’t as much.
I don’t remember us ever having the baked stuff they have now like twinkies and all that stuff. I don’t think they ever had that. Once in awhile my mom would make a white cake and no frosting. She would put jelly between the layers and some jelly on top of it. Then we had raspberries. We had two rows of them. Once a week we had to go pick those raspberries and we were scratched because you had to go down through a row. When we picked the raspberries, then she would let us have some sugar and some real cream on it because we had cream from the cows. That was really a treat those raspberries. If she had any left she mashed them with a potato masher really fine and put so much sugar in—I don’t know how much—and then she would put them in these tin plate things and spread this mixture out on it and then sit it out in the sun with a piece of screen over it so nothing could get in it and it made jelly. She really didn’t have pectin or anything so that is where we got our jelly.
When I got married, we liked peaches and she would always say, “Okay, we are going to get two bushels of peaches. You come on over and help me peel them and put them in bottles.” So we would do two bushels of peaches, me and her. My dad tried to help us but he drove us crazy so we tried to find jobs for him outside.
Another thing I remember about my mom—sometimes if I would get discouraged and was tired of taking care of kids and everything she would say, “Well bring your ironing and come on over.” So I would pick up my ironing and she would iron one and I would iron one we’d visit. Then she would say, “I think maybe you need a cup of tea.” And she would make me a cup of tea. That really did something for me. Then I didn’t care if I drank tea, but I just think that was so good. I would just sit there and then I would go back home and I was okay. We had a real closeness. We could tell each other anything. I really miss her.
My husband started his church callings when he was twenty-seven being the Elder’s Quorum President. Then he got put in the bishopric at only twenty-seven. Then he got—what was his next one? He got put on the High Council. Then he got put in as Bishop again. Then Stake President and when he died he was the Patriarch. He was gone a lot so I was kind of alone with the kids all the time. But we got along and everything worked out okay. Nowadays I think if the husband was gone that much they would get a divorce, wouldn’t they? I thought, when we got married you got married, and that was it. You took it for better or worse.